Approachable Fitness & Physical Therapy

Pain is not as simple as you might think!

Almost everyone will have felt pain at some time in their life. Here at the studio we see a lot of people suffering from pain, mainly associated with movement or a persistent ache. We can usually help to alleviate this either by reducing it or by offering techniques to manage it. What you may not realise is that there may not be a physical reason for the pain.

To get a better insight into what is going on when you hurt, we need to understand how you feel pain.

The ability to feel pain is very important to our wellbeing. It stops us doing things that are damaging to our bodies, and makes us rest to allow our bodies to recover from injury. So you really should not ignore pain, or simply "work through it".Firstly you should make sure that there is not physical damage causing the pain.

The expected mechanism of pain starts with some physical damage which causes receptors within the nervous system to fire. This action creates minute electrical currents which are passed from nerve cell to nerve cell up to the pain perception center in the brain. It is here that these signals are actually converted into what we know as pain. All along this pathway it is possible for your body to mistakenly trigger, sometimes from a sort of nerve memory. Hence, for example, the site of an old injury can often be painful even though there is no damage or reason for that pain.

The brain itself is quite capable of "making up" pain. If you injure your ankle your brain will avoid movements that cause pain in the damaged area. This is good. However once the damage is repaired, the brain continues to avoid movements that were painful. The fear of pain can cause actual pain. The brain has to be retrained to understand that the pain is no longer there by specific repeated movement patterns.

Often in avoiding pain the body will stress another area and cause a pain there. It doesn't always make the right decisions as to the best way of helping your body.We see this type of issue often at the studio. A client may have had a small injury to a back muscle lifting something heavy out of a car (shopping or a child are frequent culprits here). The body's defense mechanism leaps into action and activates a range of alternate muscle actions to protect the damaged area. Unfortunately this will usually cause a misalignment, or imbalance in the body, often resulting in the stressing of and possible damage to a whole set of different muscles ranging from shoulders to knees and ankles.

Clients come to us with a problem in their knee. However, when we have taken a holistic review of their gait and completed a range of movement tests we can see that the problem is not in fact in the knee at all, rather it is a bodily imbalance brought about by a completely different issue.

So, if you have pain, my advice is:Firstly, check with your GP to rule out a structural or other cause which needs medical treatment. Then, come to The Studio for a half hour one to one consultation so we can assess the best ongoing solution. Alternately, or in addition, if you have access to a physio ask them for muscle testing and exercises.

Frequently the solution from me (or a physio) will be regular exercise combined with soft tissue treatment and exercises to include in your existing fitness regime or to do at home.